Philosophical Drawings

Catalogue of  Selected Drawings

        The following catalogue is a selection of  some of the drawings that are part of the Philosophical Drawings. There are over 1500 drawings in the series. Most of the drawings presented here drawings seem to me to have some aesthetic merit, regardless of the degree of "finish". But the choice is rather arbitrary, and I do not mean to exclude other drawings or to imply that drawings not included here have have no aesthetic merit, or to suggest that the drawings that are more complex or denser in imagery and style are therefore 'better'. This selection is subjective and  not necessarily representative. It is intended merely to supply a viewer with a ready source to view  a large enough selection of the the drawings to give a fair experience of the drawings without my explanatory text. My texts does not represent the mentality I was in when i did the drawings. Indeed, the written texts are deliberately not an effort to reflect that mentality. A major reason for writing the Philosophical Drawings is to explore all that has changed in my mentality since i did these drawings.  I have made this catalogue to give a general idea of the Philosophical Drawings without my later interpretations and lengthy texts.  But make no mistake: there is need of explanation. These are complex drawings and express art as a kind of knowledge, or rather, art as a kind of inquiry into the meaning of life. These drawing were questions. The world the represent is one that is highly transitory, however "eternal" their aspirations may seem to be. These drawings were meant to be compared to one another and further reflected on as time passed. Many of these drawings are inaccessible without some minimal explanatory text. Certainly they communicate something without such texts and looking at them without explanations is also valid. But  I want these drawing to be accessible. But the interplay of present and past views of the world is largely what this book as a whole is about.. I do not want the meanings to be fixed and defined by the time in which they were done. I realize that allot of art history has a prejudice in favor of the time of accomplishment, as if the art historical moment were somehow truer than later interpretations or judgments. But I doubt this is true. Indeed, part of the reason for this book is to question this belief.

    The drawings were done as part of a complex search for meaning in my own life and thus have a context that ties them to my present. They are not fixed in a frozen past that is now dead. They are living art and were made partly as a kind of questioning.  In the essays that present the drawings I am answering some of the questions the drawings then posed for me. So the texts I write for the drawings is as much a part of the drawing as the lines of which the drawings are composed. I find this complex interplays of present and past views of reality very pregnant. I suppose, if they still survive after I die, the drawings and texts will become fossilized in some sort of meaning. But for me, now, they are living things, and they interact with my current self in very complex ways. So here  I present over 150 of them without commentary.  The majority of these drawings are discussed somewhere in the text.
 

The Circles' Turning	From the Fire in the Water	Rock of Voices	Entrance	Time Turning a Tornado of Language
s   The Birth of Being	Existence	Nature is a Woman self created	String of Language	Woman of the Book
The Aspiration and Failure of John Faust	Stopped and Seeing for the First Time Blindman		Wall of Being Rock of Conscience	What the Still Unsaid Eye can See
Under this book She Sleeps	Tragic Veil		Her Dying dream Resuurects the Wind	The Fire that Burns Through the World

All the Dead Held by Lovers in One Grasp

As if voice were light, Cogito Ergo Sum

Breathing Cloud Fire Flute

Blinded by Word

O Stone of Death

Sophia and Her Mad Lover (Layla and Majnun)

O Stone of Death

Poverty's Lover

Care for the Dying

Sisters of Rain

Questions and Answers from The Family of Sight

Trying to Save this Dying Thing

Ashes of the Ghost

Lover Lost

The Unjust Eye of Power

Dawn

The Nameless One

I Love Her from Head to Foot

Flowerladye

In the Cave of Her Secret	the River that made the Rose and the Sun	Shelter form the Storm	Encompassed in the Depths of the Endless Night Sky	The Philosophers
Out of the Throat, Words like Water come	Mirror of Thankfulness	As a Tree She Grows out of his Spine	Blood Sound of Future Fire (Spirit and War)	Murdered by a Spear of Light
Unwriting the Written Word into the Air	Creation of Adam	Split Like a Clock and Beside Themselves in Opposite Directions	All their Hearts Swim Round withing Yours	The Invading World Cannot Unwrite the Book of Struggle
My Beloved Book	The Sailor	The Fountain of Generation	Why Time?	The veil of Architecture
Darkness was On the face of the Deep	She Spins his Bones Into the Many colored Silks of the Sky	The Ocean behind the Air	Tomb for an Unformed Man	Two Worlds: Open book, Open Window and the Sky Between (LeonardoDa Vinci)

Spring	View From Above the Garden		Three Sculptures at the Desert Entrance	Birth and death  of the Poet
Within and Above, Without and Below	At Lands Furthest End Now Resting and Remembering	Map of Wisdom in the water Book	Maker of the Hidden Word	Creation
Invocation: Stairway of Silk and Wall of Blood	Caught and Struggling Against Nature's Inundations	Creation-Crucifixion	Entangeled in Breathing and Giving Birth to a new sky	The Single Eye Was a Pillar of Fire
	Veil of Unansweered Thought		Out of the Cradle
Knowledge	Evolution and the limits of Lanaugae	Meditations Young Philosopher	Water of the White Bird	Poet Singing Across the Sea of Modernity
Glass Ear in a Sea of Milk	The Fall (Tragic Veil)	Weaving her Hair into Sorrows	Brain on Fire in the Pupil of a Blind Poet's Eye	Veil of Unanswered Thought
Web Of Fire Energia, Material,Nihilo	History is the Last dying Breath of Everyman	Three Philosophers at the River of the Elephant	The River	Vegetable Crucifixion of the Language-less Word
Her Winged Antelope	Between the Tree of Animals and the Desert	The Temptation of St Anthony	Fool Comforted by the Ghost of His Dead Bird	Revolving Will for Evolutionary Power
The Saint. Releasing temptations, Glories in Life	The Rose Opens the Heeart	Vision of the Veil	Attacked by a Storm of Nature	Dead Man's Memory
Where Green Grass is Burnished Gold	Faust's Suicide	Two Worlds	The Blindman	The life that Glows within Her
As Gentle as the Sea Beyond Understanding	Split like a Clock		Question and Offering at the oracle of Silence	Her Song of Many Rains

Oracle

The Unexplainable Song of his Being

She is Dead

Veil

Philosophical Drawings in Color

 

Listening

The Mask Maker in the Forest

Death game Cezanne's card players

Night wishes

Pascal and the Abyss

Gathering the Nightly Sea

Self portrait: Swimming towards freedom

Among the Red Birds

Self Portrait; SpringDawn

Finding the The secret of color

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